Setting the date safely

The date on a mechanical watch flips around midnight, but the wheels that do it start engaging hours earlier. If you use the quickset date while those wheels are meshing, you can damage teeth in the calendar mechanism.

The safe sequence

1. 1Pull the crown to the time-setting position and move the hands to around 6:30 — far from the danger zone.
2. 2Push in one click to the quickset date position. Set the date to the day before today.
3. 3Pull back to time-setting and wind the hands forward past midnight until the date flips. You now know the watch is in the AM half.
4. 4Keep winding forward to the correct time. If it is afternoon, go around one more full turn to reach PM.

Short months

A simple date wheel always has 31 positions. At the end of any month with 30 days or fewer, advance the date manually on the 1st. Annual calendars handle this for you (except February), and perpetual calendars handle everything including leap years.